A former British soldier convicted of spying for Iran after an audacious three-day escape from a London prison was sentenced Monday to more than 14 years behind bars for betraying his country.
Daniel Khalife, 23, was convicted in November of violating the Official Secrets Act and Terrorism Act for providing restricted and classified material to Iran.
“As a young man you had the makings of an exemplary soldier, however, through the repeated violations of your oath of service, you showed yourself to be instead a dangerous fool,” Justice Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said.
Jurors in Woolwich Crown Court had rejected his testimony that he was trying to work for the UK as a double agent.
Khalife’s spying case had not received much attention until he broke out of Wandsworth Prison on the underbelly of a food delivery truck. He was on the run for three days before police arrested him on a bicycle by a canal in London.
Khalife pleaded guilty to the escape during his trial, but continued to contest the spying charges.
Khalife’s lawyer, who argued his acts were more like a plot from “Scooby Doo” than a James Bond thriller, said his client had only passed along imprecise information, including “laughably fake” documents that caused no actual damage.
“There’s no way that what Mr. Khalife did is going to wind up being a lesson for budding spies,” attorney Gul Nawaz Hussain said. “His intentions were neither sinister nor cynical.”
But prosecutors said Khalife had in fact played a “cynical game” by claiming he wanted to be a spy after he had delivered a large amount of restricted and classified material to the Iranian intelligence service, including the names of special forces officers.
Khalife testified that he had been in touch with people in the Iranian government but that it was all part of a ploy to ultimately work as a double agent for Britain, a scheme he developed from watching the TV show “Homeland.”
Authorities said he presented a true risk to national security because of the threat that Iran poses. Police noted that the UK has disrupted 20 plots by Iran, including assassination plans.
British security services were not aware of Khalife’s contacts with the Iranians until he contacted MI6, the UK’s foreign intelligence service, to offer to work as a double agent.
He reached out to MI6 anonymously, saying he had earned the trust of his Iranian handlers and that they had rewarded him by leaving $2,000 cash (£1,578) in a dog poo bag in a north London park.
Khalife joined the army at 16 and was assigned to the Royal Corps of Signals, a communications unit that is deployed with battlefield troops, as well as special forces and intelligence squads.
He was told he could not join the intelligence service because his mother is from Iran.
At 17, he reached out to a man connected with Iranian intelligence and began passing along information, prosecutors said. He was given NATO secret security clearance when he took part in a joint exercise at Fort Cavazos in Texas in early 2021.
The judge noted that his security breaches while on US soil could have caused diplomatic damage.
Khalife’s escape from the Victorian-era prison drew attention to larger failures in the nation’s aging and overcrowded correctional system. An inquiry is currently underway into how Khalife was able to escape and whether others helped.
Two men have been arrested on charges of helping him after he escaped.